


Try to Leave a Light On

by meoqie



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Established Relationship, M/M, Porn with Feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-03
Updated: 2016-08-03
Packaged: 2018-07-29 03:43:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7668778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meoqie/pseuds/meoqie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Demigods deal with the realities of their lives in one of two ways - they put down roots too deep to be moved, or they start running and don't stop. Will Solace's roots were a home, a hospital, and a medical degree. Nico di Angelo kept one hand on his sword and wore out pair after pair of boots. Will tells himself stolen moments here and there are fine, but sometimes he wishes the 'home' part of his roots wasn't an empty one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Try to Leave a Light On

**Author's Note:**

> I can't believe it took me this long to write - and post - a Solangelo fic after being deep in Solangelo hell for AGES now. This ship is so good, man, it's just so, so good. Anyway here's some feels followed by sex and snuggling.

_Try to leave a light on when I'm gone_  
_Something I rely on to get home_  
_One I can feel at night_  
_A naked light, a fire to keep me warm_  
_Try to leave a light on when I'm gone_  
_Even in the daylight, shine on_  
_And when it's late at night you can look inside_  
_You won't feel so alone_

 

* * *

 

 

Every demigod has to grow out of Camp Half-Blood at some point. Once they do, they always fall into one of two categories - settlers, and wanderers.

Settlers chose to find one place to put down their roots so deep nothing could move them. Not monsters, not gods, not the forces of nature. That was their home and they’d defend it with their lives.

Wanderers never stayed in one place too long, like they were trying to outrun the tragic fates that usually chased demigods. ‘Home’ was an alien word, not fitting right on their tongues.

 

Will Solace was a settler. Living life by the blade of a sword had never been his style, even before leaving camp. He’d always known he’d be going to medical school once he was old enough, and almost a decade of hard work had made him attached to what he’d earned. Home was the title of ‘Doctor’ in front of his name, the stethoscope in the pocket of a white lab coat, and the hope of a shadow darkening his bedroom door.

 

Nico di Angelo was a wanderer. The itch and the adrenaline never left his veins; the word ‘home’ might as well have been ‘prison.’

 

Will told himself he didn’t mind. They’d probably drive each other crazy if they shared a space, especially with the size of his apartment. Working as a doctor was all the fulfilment he needed, never mind the long nights in an empty bed. He _liked_ his solitary routine… until it was shattered by the soft sound of Nico appearing from the shadows to fall into him like they’d never been apart.

Come morning all that would be left was Nico’s lingering scent on his bedsheets and the rosy bruises on Will’s skin. It was fine. It was enough to have Nico at all.

 

Sometimes it would be several times a week, and Will could almost pretend their life was normal. But other times months would pass without even a word. Nico was always apologetic after those times.

“I’m sorry, sunshine,” he’d whisper between kisses. “But you know how time is in the Underworld.”

Will did know. But knowing didn’t stop his insides from twisting up with bitterness, even as he turned toward Nico’s mouth like a flower to the sun. Would it kill him to remember to send an Iris message every now and then, to let Will know he was still alive?

 

It had been five weeks, three days, and twenty-two hours since Will last saw Nico di Angelo. The flutter of hope he always felt when he walked in his door was a dull ache at this point, something he could just push away.

 

“Hey.”

The ache exploded into a burn as the quiet voice greeted him from a corner of his living room.

“Hey,” Will replied with a mouth drier than Death Valley.

“I missed you.”

Will couldn’t reply to that, he just wrapped Nico’s bony frame up in his arms and dropped his head onto his shoulder. He felt Nico sigh as he embraced him in return.

He’d studied cases of addiction, he knew all the chemical terminology and what it did to a brain, but being here with Nico he _understood_. Every interaction ate him up a little more inside but he couldn’t bring himself to make it stop. He’d take Nico any way he could get him, even after all this time.

“Can we talk?”

Will’s chest constricted as his heart dropped into his stomach. He nodded.

Nico took his hand and led him to the bedroom. Mentally Will was already rehearsing what he’d say in response to what he just knew Nico was going to tell him.

 

_This isn’t really working… I can’t keep coming back to you like this… I’ve found someone else._

 

His eyes were burning by the time they walked through the doorway. Nico gave a quiet sigh as he settled on the edge of the bed, folding his long legs underneath him. Dimly, Will was aware that he’d actually remembered to take off his shoes for once.

“Are you… happy with your life, the way it is?” Nico began, stumbling over the words.

Will knitted his eyebrows together. “I don’t quite follow.”

Nico patted the space beside him on the bed, and Will gingerly sat down.

“The way things are, between us, is it okay?” Nico elaborated, picking at a loose thread on his jeans. “Or… would you want me to stay?”

Will’s breath hitched, his train of thought unexpectedly diverted onto a wholly different track.

“I… I want you to be happy,” he said. “If you’re okay with how things are, then I’m okay.”

Nico glanced up and narrowed his eyes at him. “That’s not what I asked. I asked you if _you_ want me to stay.”

Emotions clawed at Will’s throat and he had to take a few moments to compose himself.

“Yes, I want you to stay. I’ve always wanted you to stay. Gods, Nico, I want to come home to you every night and wake up beside you and live my life knowing where the fuck you are at any given time instead of lying awake wondering if you’re even alive because it’s been so long since I heard from you and while I like to think some part of me would know if you were dead the way it always works in the movies but I know that wouldn’t be the case because I’m not the one with a direct hotline to the underworld!”

By the time he finished he was shouting, his voice wet and cracking.

Nico looked a little shocked by his outburst.

“How long have you been thinking all this?” he asked after several heartbeats of silence.

Will rubbed his eyes with his sleeve, sighing. “I’m always thinking this.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

A corner of Nico’s mouth quirked into his ‘bitterly amused’ smile. “You’d think we’d be a little better at communication after all this time.”

Will rolled his eyes. “We’d actually have to see each other for more than a few hours at a time to communicate.”

Nico laughed hollowly and nodded. “But you still want me to stay?”

“I still want you to stay,” Will said without a breath of hesitation. He reached over and took Nico’s hand. “I love you, and we’ve been together long enough that I think we could make it work. But I only want you to stay if you truly want to stay. If you’d be unhappy, then I don’t want it.”

Nico laced their fingers together, staring down at their hands. “I think I want to stay. I’m getting too old to sleep beside campfires in the woods. I’m like, over a hundred at this point.”

Will rolled his eyes again but smiled slightly.

“So if you’re okay with sharing your home with me…”

“Nico di Angelo, shut up,” Will said, giving him a gentle shove. “Home isn’t just a place. And this place? It always feels more like home when you’re here with me.”

“Gods, that’s so fucking sappy, Solace,” Nico teased.

“You know you love it.”

“I really actually do.”

 

Will grinned as Nico pulled him close by the collar of his shirt, and as their lips met he felt even more buoyant than he usually did when kissing Nico.

Nico was going to stay. Nico _wanted_ to stay with him. No more weeks of waiting and hoping and worrying. Nico was home.

Will’s thoughts scattered as Nico slid a hand down the back of his shirt, and he decided he could happily reflect on the fact that he’d be staying some other time. Right now he had a son of Hades to ravish.

Nico made a soft sound as Will pushed him back onto the bed, trailing kisses down his neck. Nico’s long fingers tangled into Will’s hair as he sucked a dark bruise onto Nico’s neck, prompting a gasp and a giggle. In bed, Nico was always freer with his laughter. Will adored it.

“You know I’m going to have to retaliate,” Nico said.

Will smiled at the vibrations of Nico’s throat against his lips as he spoke. “That’s not hardly fair, you don’t have a job you have to be presentable for.”

“Tough shit.”

Will yelped as Nico bodily flipped the both of them, trapping him against the mattress. Sometimes he forgot that his boyfriend was stronger than him, despite their height difference.

“And I know you can heal your bruises if you really want to,” Nico breathed, leaning over. “You just choose not to because you like being marked by me.”

A thrill went through him at just how transparent his thoughts were to Nico. Will shuddered and arched his hips up against him. “You know _that_ but didn’t know that I wanted you to stay,” he accused gently.

Nico hid his face against the side of Will’s neck to avoid answering, trapping a patch of his skin between his teeth. Will whimpered as that sent a bolt of pleasure down his spine.

“Or was it that you chose not to acknowledge that you knew?” Will prompted once Nico released his hold.

Nico sighed and sat back up. Will gently caressed his thighs with both hands.

“Before, your wanting me felt like being trapped,” Nico said, placing his hands over Will’s. “It doesn’t anymore.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Will asked softly.

Nico sighed, absently tracing circles on the back of Will’s hands with his fingertips.

 

“I thought the feeling would go away on its own. And I did like what we had. I didn’t want to give you up entirely.”

He grimaced slightly. “That was selfish of me, wasn’t it? Making you wait around like some kind of sea captain’s wife or something.”

 

Will arched an eyebrow at the ocean-related metaphor but didn’t comment. “It was a little selfish. But it would have been selfish of me to assume you wanted a domestic life after camp. This situation was my choice, however misguided it may have been.”

“I didn’t really give you much of a choice, though,” Nico pointed out. “It was either have me intermittently, or not at all.”

“That’s choice enough. I just couldn't give you up.”

Nico smiled slightly and leaned down to steal a kiss. “Look at us, already doing the communication thing.”

“I’m so proud of us.”

“Me too. Can we have sex now?”

Will laughed. “Definitely.”

 

Nico grinned and yanked off his shirt. Will watched the shift of his arms and abdomen appreciatively. After tossing his own aside, Nico reached for Will’s shirt. He immediately raised his body up and lifted his arms to accommodate the removal. Nico smirked slightly and didn’t pull it all the way off, leaving his arms trapped above his head.

“I think you need a few more hickeys,” Nico said in a matter-of-fact tone.

“You’re going to cost me a fortune in conceal-ah!” Will gasped as Nico bit his pulse.

Pleasure coursed through his body as Nico peppered his neck and collarbone with love bites. He struggled to focus on freeing his hands from his shirt as the other man did his best to distract him. As Nico moved his mouth lower he managed to extricate himself from the fabric and he caught him before he went too far, pulling him into a deep kiss. Kissing Nico never stopped being just as exhilarating as it had been the very first time the son of Hades had allowed him to invade his closely-guarded personal space enough to press their lips together.

Nico hummed happily as Will wrapped one leg around his body, slowly rocking their hips together. The contact was just enough to build the heat growing under his skin as his arousal increased. They had plenty of time, now, there was no need to rush.

It was Nico’s turn to make a sound of surprise as Will flipped them over again, narrowly avoiding falling off the edge of the bed.

“Close call,” Nico murmured between kisses.

Will bit Nico’s lower lip, trailing a hand down his chest. “I knew what I was doing.”

Nico snorted. “Sure you did.”

Will kissed him again to shut him up, not pulling back until they were both panting.

 

“Hey Nico?”

“Yeah?”

“Marry me.”

Nico froze, and Will sat up a little.

“I already said I would stay, you don’t need to contractually bind me to you,” Nico said.

“Marriage is more than just a contract, Death Boy,” Will said. “And it’s not about that. It’s more for me. I want people to see the ring on my finger and know I’m yours.”

Nico’s expression was still skeptical. Will kissed his forehead.

“It doesn’t have to be anytime soon, I just really want to be your husband someday.”

Nico’s face softened a bit. “Husband, huh?” He tucked a strand of hair behind Will’s ear. Will caught his hand before he could pull it away, cupping it against his cheek. “I guess that does sound kind of nice… Does this make us engaged now?”

“Do you want it to be an engagement?”

“Oh, what the hell. Might as well commit myself fully to settling down. We’re engaged.”

 

Will almost couldn’t breathe with how elated that simple statement made him feel. He captured Nico’s mouth in a bruising kiss until the other man pushed him back, switching their positions again and purposefully moving away from the edge of the mattress.

“And Nico?”

“Hmm?”

The son of Hades looked up from where he was unfastening his jeans.

“You don’t have to settle down entirely,” Will said. “If you ever need to disappear for a while, I’ll understand. Just promise to let me know ahead of time, and call every so often so I know you’re okay.”

Nico smiled crookedly. “I think I can manage that.”

Will smiled back and took his hand, bringing it up to his lips to kiss his knuckles gently. “Now then, fiancé, I think we should properly celebrate our engagement.”

Nico huffed. “I’ve been tryin’! You keep interrupting me! Let me get naked already!”

Laughing, Will let go of Nico so he could stand up and yank off his pants.

“Do you want to undress me or shall I go ahead?” He asked.

Nico flapped a hand at him, hopping a bit to get the skinny jeans over his feet. Will took that to mean ‘go ahead’ and promptly pulled down the stretchy-waist scrub pants and his underwear in one smooth motion. Nico was still fighting with his jeans.

“I think it might be time to abandon the emo kid aesthetic,” Will commented, laying back on the bed and absently stroking himself to bolster his erection.

“Never!” Nico protested, finally freeing himself and ditching the boxer-briefs afterward.

 

Slender legs pinned Will’s hips to the bed as Nico straddled him, brushing his fingertips against his sides. Will squirmed a bit and tried not to laugh as he was tickled. Nico grinned and shifted backwards until he could lean down and run his tongue up Will’s cock. Will shuddered and leaned his head back against the pillows.

Knowing what was probably coming next, Will quickly reached up behind the headboard to grab lube and a condom before he was too blissed-out by the blowjob to remember. He deposited the supplies where Nico could easily grab them and then closed his eyes, losing himself in the pleasure of Nico’s mouth.

Nico’s dark curls were soft under his hand as he did his best to ground himself without tugging too much. Will had learned the hard way that pulling Nico’s hair didn’t end well for him. Usually he just kept his hands off, since the waves of ecstasy Nico could prompt with his mouth made it hard to not tighten his grip involuntarily. But right now he had to be touching him, it wasn’t enough to just lay back and receive.

“Fuck,” he gasped as he felt a slick finger begin to probe at his entrance.

 

Whenever they had a ‘dry spell’ of Nico being gone, there was always a little bit of discomfort the first time after. Will bit his lip, doing his best to relax his body. Nico was doing an admirable job of distracting him with his tongue fluttering against the tip of his arousal before swallowing him to the base, making Will moan softly and arch his hips off the mattress.

“Nico, ah, fuck, stop,” Will gasped as he felt the heat in his body increasing a little too quickly. “Stop, or I’m gonna come.”

With one last thorough lick, Nico pulled his mouth off him and sat up, pushing one of Will’s legs up so he could finger him deeper. Will gripped the bedsheets and shivered. Nico’s gaze felt like it was burning against his skin. He flushed and looked away, feeling exposed.

“You look so good when you’re like this,” Nico murmured, stroking his thumb against his leg. “Gods, you always look so good. But you look best when you’re desperate for me.”

The words went through him like electricity, making him shiver again.

“Good thing I enjoy being desperate for you,” Will panted.

“Mhmm.”

 

Nico curled his fingers and Will moaned, clutching at the sheets tighter. The other man proceeded to just taunt that spot with the barest touches as he stretched him, until Will was shaking and begging.

“Please, please, Nico, I need your cock! Please fuck me now!”

“I think I need to you to beg a little more,” Nico commanded, his eyes bright and his own erection firm and leaking against his stomach.

“Oh please, I really need it,” Will whimpered. “I’ll do anything just to have you inside me. Please, Nico.”

Seemingly satisfied, or perhaps just too impatient himself, Nico removed his fingers to snatch the condom up off the bed. Will shifted his position a little to better accommodate the shorter man between his legs.

“I love you so much, I hope you know,” Will murmured as Nico leaned over him and lined himself up.

“I do know,” Nico confirmed, kissing him briefly. “I love you, too.”

Will could have continued spouting sweetness but Nico very effectively cut off all thoughts entirely by entering him with one solid thrust, making him gasp.

As the initial burn faded, Will wrapped his legs around Nico’s waist, pulling him closer. He needed to feel Nico - his _fiancé_ \- with every inch of his skin.

Will put one arm around Nico’s neck and kissed him, his abdominal muscles flexing as he sat up. Nico hummed and slowly rolled his hips in a shallow thrust. Will shuddered and moaned quietly against Nico’s mouth.

 

Nico suddenly laughed.

“Hmm?” Will murmured.

“I just realized I’m going to marry the first and only man I’ve ever had sex with,” Nico said impishly, rolling his hips again.

“Hey, me too,” Will said with a lazy grin.

“How very conservative of us.”

They laughed together for a moment until Nico started to move in earnest, leaving no breath for laughter in between panting and soft moans.

Will put his other arm around Nico’s neck to brace himself more firmly as he did his best to bring his hips up to meet Nico’s in the same rhythm. Nico was biting his lip in the way that told Will he was practically in Elysium, and Will shortly joined him as the other man wrapped his lube-slicked hand around his erection and began to stroke firmly.

“Ah, gods, Nico, I’m so close,” Will panted as he felt the edge approaching.

“Mm, come for me, my fiancé.”

 

If he hadn’t been too lost be aware of it, Will probably would have been embarrassed by the fact that Nico just using that word was enough to bring him to orgasm at that point. White-hot rapture swept through his body like a wave of molten metal, making him moan loudly as he trembled in Nico’s arms.

“Oh gods, fuck,” Nico whimpered, stroking him through his release as his thrusts became more erratic.

Will shuddered and softly moaned again as he felt Nico come, ramping up the pleasure from the aftershocks he was still feeling.

Panting softly, they lay in bed together, not moving as they waited for the rush of endorphins to fade enough to focus.

 

“I’ll go get a washcloth,” Nico mumbled as his breathing evened out.

Will untangled all his limbs from around Nico’s body to allow him to get up. As he waited for Nico to come back he stared at the ceiling, smiling slightly to himself.

Nico was going to stay. Nico was going to be living with him. Nico was his _fiancé_.

The bed dipped and a warm washcloth swiped across the come splattered on his chest and stomach.

“Don’t just toss that on the floor like last time,” Will said. “The hamper is literally right there.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

Nico obligingly threw the cloth into the hamper before curling his body up against Will’s side.

Will absently stroked Nico’s hair with one hand as he fought against his heavy eyelids. He didn’t want to sleep yet, no matter what his post-coitus chemicals were telling him.

 

“I’ll still be here in the morning, you know,” Nico whispered, seeming to sense his struggle.

“Promise?”

“I swear on the river Styx.”

Satisfied, Will snuggled up against Nico, finding a position that was comfortable for both of them. Knowing that the man he loved would still be there beside him when he woke made the apartment feel warmer, somehow.

 

And maybe, just maybe, he’d concede to go on some harrowing risk-life-and-limb adventures with Nico every now and again. Adrenaline was meant to strengthen relational bonds, after all. So maybe there was more than two types of demigods. A settler and a wanderer could meet in the middle, with enough willingness to try.

Will pressed a soft kiss to Nico’s temple.

“Goodnight, fiancé,” he breathed.

“Goodnight, sunshine.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> Edit: Huge shout-out to [Mab](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Queenie_Mab/profile) for being an excellent beta and overall guide to all things fandom writing related. I'm a goober who totally forgot to include this from the get-go.


End file.
